www.obooko.

com

'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in his huge voice.

'Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!' chanted the little girl,

still
capering round.

Sorne Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park
that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a
popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see it. He took his leave
of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage
when something hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though
a red hot wire had been jabb ed into him.He spun round ju st in time to see Mrs
Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.

'Goldstein!' bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most struck
Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman's greyish face.

Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table
again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a
clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the
armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between
Iceland and the Faroe lslands.

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror.
Another yea r, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms
of unorthodoxy. Nearly ali children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of ali
was that by meansof such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned
into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever
to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and
everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the
drilling with dummy rifles,the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother-it was ali a
sort of glorious game to them. Ali their ferocity was turned outwards, against the
enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thoughtcriminals . It was
almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with
good reason, for hardly a week passed in which 'The Times' did not carry a paragraph
describing how sorne eavesdropping little sneak-'child hero' was the phrase generally
used-had overheard sorne compromising remark and denounced its parents to the
Thought Police.

19